Custom
by Trill
Summary: She knits. Shelya


Title: Custom  
Author: Trill  
Fandom: SGA  
Pairing: Sheyla  
Rating: G  
Warning: not a one.  
Words: 765  
Summary: She knits. Shelya.  
Disclaimer: Still don't own anyone.

Notes: Unabashed fluff. Un-beta'd. Possibly unforgivable. ;-)

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She knits.

It's shouldn't bother him, he thinks. All the things that evolved the same between their cultures. Language, wine, lighters, guns, and he took all of it in stride. But this…

His mother knit, whenever his father was TDY. Scarves and hats and sweaters that he hated but wore anyway, because she was so proud of them.

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He'd gone with her on her trips to the mainland, watched her pick long strands of what his mind calls wool. Most of it is not quite white, the same color it is on the big animals Ford had tried to name Shorses. Sometimes, though, she would get bundles in soft pastels, or vibrant blue and pink, the same colors as the sweet fruits that grow in the woods behind the settlement.

-----

He asks Teyla what she's making, and she tells him it will be a bed covering.

"A blanket?" he asks, for clarification.

She cocks her head to the side, closes her eyes in thought, and nods slowly. "Yes, a blanket."

Four inches or so hang down from her crude wooden needles. He fingers it; surprised to find it much softer once it's worked than it was in the bundles. "Who's it for?" he asks, sitting on the bed next to her, "it seems too small for you."

She giggles. Soft, ephemeral. "No, Selana is expecting a child. It is customary," she explained, reaching the end of a row, "to give a new mother things her child will need. Is this not so with your people?"

"Actually, it is," he tells her with a smile. _Everything is the same, everywhere you go_. He hums it to himself, because it feels like part of a song.

As she starts the next row she doesn't flip the needles, like his mother did. She just starts knitting from the right to the left. He stops himself short of telling her that there's a better way to do that because he doesn't remember what it is and it's a damn critical thing to say, anyway.

-----

In between meetings and his trip to see Ford's family, he has three free days on earth. He spends a whole half of one day in a yarn store with a disgustingly cute name, trying to find something for Teyla. He didn't think it would be hard. His mother had a set of metal needles that clacked as she worked and a whole box of different colored yarns that felt vaguely plastic. But then he gets to the store and there are twelve kinds of needles and shelf upon shelf of different yarns.

It's ten minutes before a blond who looks and acts like she's recently taken a recreational dose of Valium approaches him and asks if he needs help.

"Yeah, um, I'm looking for something for my…" _alien buddy from another galaxy_, he finished in his head.

"Girlfriend?" the blond asks, cocking her head and grinning.

"Uh… yeah. Girlfriend." He goes back to looking at something green with orange and pink puffs all along it.

"What kind of yarn does she like?"

His head snaps up. The only word he can think of is Shorse. "Sho… Ath… ah, natural stuff."

He leaves that day with five different pairs of bamboo needles and twelve balls of wool yarn dyed blue and green and purple, softer than what she has.

-----

The night they return to Atlantis he finds himself outside of her quarters. "I, uh, got you a present," he tells her, holding out the box.

"Maj-Colonel Sheppard, you did not have to-"

"Oh, come one, you know I did," he cuts her off as he sets the box on the corner of her bed.

"Thank you," she says softly and pulls the flaps open. She takes out one of the balls and turns it over slowly in her hands.

"You like it?" Suddenly he feels like a teenager, trying to impress his first girlfriend.

"It is lovely," she pulls out a strand and works it between her thumb and forefinger, "very soft."

"There's needles, too. A couple different sizes. I wasn't sure-"

"Thank you," she says again, smiling up at him. Already she's twisting yarn around one of her needles, "it's lovely."

He settles on the floor beside her bed, listening to the soft sounds made by the wood as the needles rub against each other. After a time she begins to hum, and he tries to place the tune.

_This isn't home_, he reminds himself, _not everything is what you think it is_.

But then he does place it.

She's humming Flesh and Blood.

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End file.
